Will Rahn

“Repeal and replace” has been a conservative mantra ever since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. But while the process of getting rid of the law is somewhat straightforward, there’s been no consensus on what to actually replace it with.

Enter Sally Pipes, the renowned health care expert and president of the Pacific Research Institute. Pipes has a way to replace Obamacare’s expensive government health care bureaucracies with a market-driven system that she says would offer better treatment to patients while saving taxpayers money.

“I wanted to do a blueprint so politicians, staffers and people in the states could say ‘this is what I believe in,” Pipes said of her new book, “The Pipes Plan,” during an extensive interview with The Daily Caller.

“Americans demand the very best,” she said. “They don’t want to be told they have to wait four months for an MRI. They want it best, they want it now, and that’s expensive.”

One easy way to drive down health care costs, Pipes argued, is through tort reform.

“President Obama says health care is expensive because doctors want to line their pockets,” Pipes said. “Well, doctors do a lot of tests because they’re afraid of being sued, so we could reduce our costs if [all] the states did medical malpractice reform like they did in Texas.” (More on the health care law)

Pipes said that there’s still time to replace Obamacare, but only if we elect a president who has the backbone to repeal a government entitlement. That’s why she’s worried about Mitt Romney, who designed and implemented what Pipes said was a disastrous working version of Obamacare during his time as governor of Massachusetts.

“In January of 2006, I was one of the first people to write why Romneycare would be bad for Massachusetts,” Pipes said. “In fact, it hasn’t achieved universal coverage. … Insurance in Massachusetts is the most expensive in the country, even though there is an individual mandate.”